BEREA, Ohio -- Rob Chudzinski will get to prove he was the best available head coaching candidate.

For now, we can say he was a very available head coaching candidate.

Chudzinski said Friday he didn't interview with any of the other teams trying to fill a vacancy. Not by choice.

That doesn't invalidate his credentials. What it does is further the perception that Joe Banner and Jimmy Haslam were convinced about the value of their "process" -- there's that word again -- and that the preferred end-game of that process included stamping the next great, young "offensive mind" as their discovery.

"For years I was keeping track of the best young people in the league, in all departments," Banner said Friday.

Chudzinski qualifies, though clearly his star shined brighter after his work here in 2007 as offensive coordinator and again in Carolina after his first year there than it did this time around.

The Browns contacted him Tuesday. He interviewed Wednesday, got a call to meet Joe Banner and Jimmy Haslam for dinner Thursday in Charlotte, N.C., then flew back with them to be introduced as the team's sixth head coach since 1999.

Haslam claims they had a pretty good idea Chudzinski was the "right guy" and then confirmed it an hour into the Thursday dinner.

Do they trust their instincts that much? Or, knowing the power Banner holds in the organizational structure would limit the field, did they decide a promising and more malleable candidate was the best they could do?

"I don't know that that perception exists," Banner said, "but the people we interviewed should (discount) that."

The Browns called off the search, with Bruce Arians and Lovie Smith un-interviewed and with coaches from this weekend's playoff casualties becoming available.

"Had we not felt like we had the right guy there were additional people we would've interviewed," Banner said.

You hope for their sake (and especially yours) they're right about Chudzinski's potential, that he can command a locker room and institute accountability. Strategy is a small part of the job.

Hiring Chudzinski didn't match the drum roll that began with Haslam pledging to deliver "dynamic leadership" and Banner's stated goal of hiring the best of the best in building an organization.

Haslam contended Friday the Browns never had a favorite, never identified the coach they really wanted.

Of course they had, but what's the point of debating their interest in Chip Kelly, which was nine hours of seriousness, or in Doug Marrone, whom they liked enough to hire except that Buffalo grabbed him while they flirted with Kelly.

Past Browns regimes got their No. 1 guys. Butch Davis was a No. 1 overall coaching draft pick, for instance. Remember when Romeo Crennel supposedly "blew us away" in the interview? A few years later, the Browns were back on eHarmony again.

This? This was two coaching searches in one.

The first ended with a whiff. The second with a coach who brought one major selling point to the interview and the promise of another.

Anti-Shurmur aggression on offense.

And a close connection to Norv Turner.

Banner wouldn't specifically address reports that Turner would sign on as Chudzinski's offensive coordinator, saying only that when Chudzinski talked coaching staff he got their attention.

Turner is played out as a head coach but well respected as an offensive coordinator. He could be a long-term hire. That increases the Wow Factor from "hardly any" to "some."

More importantly, having an experienced coordinator gives Chudzinski (who is already a better head-coaching candidate than Shurmur was) something his predecessor sorely missed in his first year on the job.

Chudzinski said early in Friday's press conference that he's willing to share power. Hopefully that means play-calling, too.

Meanwhile, Banner made it clear Chudzinski would not only have a say in the player-acquisition department but that he would "dictate" what kind of players he needed to run his offense.

Next, the Browns will hire a GM/personnel man. Organizations win Super Bowls, not just head coaches.

There's lots of work to be done still, with Haslam and Banner professing full faith in their hiring process and vowing to give another inexperienced Browns' coach time to show just how good he can become.

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